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Scotland Yard Arrests Teenages For Involvement In Largest English Language Cybercrime Forum

Last updated: September 9, 2015 | 13,732 views

It seems both the US and UK governments have been cracking down pretty harshly on cybercrime operations over the past two years. A number of ‘underground’ forums and cybercrime operations have been shut down including those involving botnets, carding and phishing.

This time two teenagers have been caught by the PCeU (part of Scotland Yard) in London for involvements in various shady activities.

Two teenagers have been arrested for their alleged involvement in the world’s largest English-language cybercrime forum. The pair were detained by appointment in central London on Wednesday by the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), a national unit based at Scotland Yard.

An eight-month investigation into the forum, which hasn’t been named, found it had almost 8,000 members who traded malware, cybercrime tutorials and stolen banking information. The cybercrime tools for sale included the ZeuS Trojan and data stolen from machines it has already infected. Detectives have so far recovered 65,000 credit card numbers from the forum.

It’d be interesting to know which forum this is with over 8000 members and being English language, there’s not very many of those around. There’s not really much detail included in this initial report, no names or handles, the forum is not disclosed and how they were caught has also not been shared.

I’m pretty sure all the details will come out sooner or later, perhaps the operation is still on-going so they don’t want to let too much slip.

The two males, aged 17 and 18, were arrested on suspicion of encouraging or assisting crime, unauthorised access under the Computer Misuse Act and conspiracy to commit fraud. The have been bailed pending further investigations.

The PCeU’s Detective Chief Inspector Terry Wilson said: “Today’s arrests are an example of our increasing effort to combat online criminality and reduce national harm to the UK economy and public.” The unit has already had its budget slashed as part of Home Office cuts.

It’s a shame to see this unit facing a budget cut, but well the UK economy is in a mess now so it’s fair enough.